USB devices have usually been associated with devices that connect to our computers such as flash drives, external hard drives, smartphones, tablets, cameras, etc. But what about those times when lugging around a laptop is not convenient, for example a photographer during a wedding who needs to quickly transfer photos out of his memory card and get ready for the next shot? Now it seems that SuperSpeed, the USB promoter group, has announced the availability of the USB On-The-Go (OTG) 3.0 and Embedded Host supplement for USB 3.0.
The OTG specification will now allow USB devices to communicate among themselves without the need for a computer present. Mobile devices such as smartphones and cameras will greatly benefit from this as it would allow data transfers i.e. photographs from your camera to your smartphone at USB 3.0 speeds at theoretical transfer rates of 5Gbps. For those still using USB 2.0, not to worry there will be backwards compatibility with the USB OTG 2.0.